Fiscal Face Plant

It is now 2013, and I can unequivocally state that I am sick and tired of all of the Fiscal Cliff crap…mainly because crap is all that we are getting from Washington. After all of the angst and hand-wringing and closed-door meetings and finger-pointing and bloviating for the press, all the White House and the Senate have managed to produce is yet another spending bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deal struck between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden, which passed in the Senate in a 92-8 vote, will add another $3.9 trillion to our already gargantuan federal deficit over the next decade. That’s an extra $390,000,000,000 that our government will spend over and above what they take in every year.

This is not what our nation needs – especially not right now, when our government already spends so much over and beyond what they bring in every year, and the economy is still extremely stagnant.

But despite the blame game that has been the entire Fiscal Cliff drama, the simple, unadulterated truth is that the Fiscal Cliff, and the resulting 11th-hour deal is a direct result of the massive failure in leadership of President Obama and Harry Reid. While the sequestration aspect was an attempt by the GOP to force Democrats into cutting spending, if Obama and Reid truly gave a damn about America’s future, they would have taken a break from campaigning six or seven months ago and ironed out a deal then. But that wasn’t in the Democrats’ best interests politically, so instead the media buried any mention of the Fiscal Cliff until after the election, and the Democrats purposely put off a resolution until the very last second so they could engage in their blame-game. The election was two months ago, yet Barack Obama still has not stopped campaigning.

The Democrats have made it perfectly clear that they are willing to do extreme harm to our nation if it is in their own political self-interest.

Over the past four years, the Republican-controlled Congress has introduced bill after bill after bill to try and spur job creation in America and get our economy moving forward. Every bill has been killed in the Senate. They haven’t even been put to a vote. While the Senate has voted down President Obama’s budget proposals, they have not passed a budget of their own in over three years, and they have refused to vote on budget proposals coming out of the House.

Even during the Fiscal Cliff talks, Harry Reid adamantly refused to allow the Senate to put President Obama’s initial proposal to a vote, calling attempts by Mitch McConnell do so a “stunt.” When Republicans put forward their own proposal, which would have raised taxes without raising tax rates, Reid told Republicans they needed to “get serious.” He said much the same thing about the GOP’s so-called “Plan B” proposal. Meanwhile, Reid made no attempt to produce a proposal of his own.

Throughout the Fiscal Cliff talks, Reid never ceased to emphasize his dogmatic requirement that tax rates be raised on “the rich,” which by his measure had to be incomes of $250,000 and up. By Reid’s own measure, the current Biden/McConnell proposal is just another un-serious joke, and the Senate should never have voted on it.

Instead of calling him “Senator Reid,” his colleagues should start calling him “Hypocrite Harry.”

Rather than going through the regular legislative process, the Biden/McConnell plan was released at a late hour, and voted on within minutes. It is extremely doubtful that any senator was able to read the plan before it was put to a vote…and this is in the United States Senate, supposedly our nation’s greatest deliberative body.

It is unfortunate for America that the Democrats won the presidency and control of the Senate in November, as they are actively abusing their power, ruining our nation for their own political self-interest.

I think about the only good thing to come out of this deal is that it re-instituted the pay freeze for federal employees that President Obama tried to overturn via executive fiat.

As I write this, I just learned that the House passed the Fiscal Cliff spending bill, so now all that is left is for President Obama to sign it.

Our political leaders have sold our nation out. President Obama is gloating; all that matters to him is the political win. GOP leadership in the House has proven to be an utter failure, choosing to abandon conservative principles in order to avoid some bad press.

The names of all who voted for this travesty are on record, both those in the House and in the Senate. Remember this vote. If your Senator or your Congressman voted Yes, then it is time to replace them. Find a good, strong conservative in your area, and help them to run a strong primary campaign in the next election.

The time for putting up with this kind of recklessness is over. The time for action is now.